From: Joseph Esposito <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2013 09:50:11 -0500

Sorry you don't find the bauxite analogy illuminating, but let's heed
Joan Baez:  "Then give me another word for it/You who are so good with
words":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGMHSbcd_qI

And whatever metaphor you choose, please answer the question of how it
is if publishers add no value, as Chuck, implied, why are some
publishers so much more successful than others?  I would have thought
that when you multiply by zero, you get zero.

As for Jennifer Howard's question to Alicia Wise, I should mention
that I have never met Wise. I would expect her to distance herself
from the analogy, as any publisher would.  Keeping authors happy is
what publishers do.

Joe Esposito


On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 6:16 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Laura Quilter <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2013 22:21:09 -0500
>
> I look forward to explaining to faculty that their submitted
> manuscripts are the equivalent of bauxite to the publishers' aluminum.
>  I'm a fan of publishers' work and role in the process.  I believe
> that a lot of thinking needs to be done to figure out how to carry
> that value forward in a transitioning scholarly communication process,
> but this analogy really strains credulity.
>
> Scholars do a little more than merely uncovering "ore" (facts,
> perhaps?), and a submitted manuscript is considerably more than ore.
>
> The peer review process -- mediated and managed by the publishers, but
> not conducted by them -- oftentimes gives guidance as to further
> refinement, but the work is conducted by the authors.  Not just the
> experimental and research work, but the writing.
>
> If the intellectual input in an author's work were as significant as
> suggested by this bauxite-to-aluminum analogy, then the publisher
> wouldn't need a transfer of copyright agreement -- they would be
> co-authors -- or hell, just give them authorship and drop a footnote
> to the original authors.
>
> As for developing markets -- this too is really rather outrageous.
> Publishers do a lot of work in servicing markets, and exploiting them;
> call it development if you will, but the relationship of industrial
> manufacturers like aluminum to product development is again a very,
> very poor analogy to the relationship of scholarly and academic
> publishers to the consumers of research -- the fellow academics who
> read the materials, the libraries who purchase them, the industries
> that rely on them downstream or in other ways.
>
> I am really just flabbergasted by this analogy.
>
> Laura